Me and The Delta

For a few weeks, when things were opening up, I cautiously started going out. I got some N95 masks and started to get familiar with Lyft and taxis again. And grocery stores! It was so good to do my own shopping, to pick out the things I wanted to eat. I could choose the freshest, ripest produce and make impulse buys if something looked good but wasn’t on my list. Except for riding with strangers, I felt safe. 

Each time before leaving the house, I had to weigh the pros and cons. I wasn’t sure how much risk I was willing to take and I had to think things through without guidelines. I mean, I had the CDC guidelines, but I knew they didn’t fit me. No way was I going to a bar or a baseball game or any other place where a whole bunch of people, some vaccinated, some not, were mingling and interacting and closer than six feet away from me. I didn’t want to take that chance, even if the CDC thought it was fine.

I knew that in my state we were nowhere near herd immunity and that Delta, being more contagious, spreads more rapidly. It would take a much higher rate of vaccination to achieve herd immunity and, given the percentage of the population who do not want to be vaccinated, we probably will never get to that point. 

I realized that I had to set my own guidelines and that I had to make similar decisions over and over without any feedback. The process was stressful and emotionally exhausting.

I watched the number of cases rise daily and figured it was getting pretty dangerous out there. I didn’t want to catch the virus and I didn’t want to risk infecting others unknowingly. I had isolated myself at home when the number of cases of the original strain of COVID was way lower than the current number of predominantly Delta COVID. It didn’t make sense to throw caution to the wind just because lots of other people were. So I went back into self-isolation.

How do I feel about it? Sad, but mainly resigned. I think it is a sensible decision, but to tell the truth, I am tired of being sensible. I wish I didn’t feel this was the right decision for me – I would far rather be able to go out and have fun whenever I wanted. I feel deprived.

There are echoes of my childhood issues in this situation. I spent most of my pre-school time in one room at home with trips to the park on nice days. I definitely was deprived of interaction with other children. The days were pretty much the same. I knew nothing else, so I wasn’t sad. 

During these years, I was abused in the cult and developed amnesia for what happened. I didn’t consciously remember, but my body remembered and became stiff and wary. Unconsciously I was absorbing messages – I wasn’t good enough, I was stupid, I was worthless, I was evil. Cult time was intense, home time was boring.

Self-isolation is going to give me another opportunity to look at those deep beliefs, to challenge them, to discover the rules, and then defy the rules, one and all. This will not be boring!

I think that every new trauma can stir up memories of older, similar ones. Thus a flashback is like those nested Russian dolls. There are flashbacks within flashbacks.A flashback to what happened last night, and what happened last year, and what happened when you were 12, and 6, and maybe even 2. And that is very crazy-making. What feelings, what behaviors, are part of which flashback? And would it make sense to sort things into past and present, not one pile for present and many little piles for past events?

This experience of self-isolation doesn’t elicit a full-fledged flashback. It’s more diffuse, mistier. But it is like the nested dolls, with echoes of feelings from different stages of my life when I struggled with loneliness and alienation. 

I may be physically isolated, but I am not emotionally isolated, thanks to ZOOM. My emotional life is rich and I have many friends. I think I can say without exaggeration that I have more friends and more close friends than I have ever had.

I never explicitly worked on making friends. Never read all that self-help advice, never looked at what childhood beliefs and traumas held me back from close relationships. It just happened, like growth spurts happen to children with no effort on their part.

It’s not the first time I’ve been busy working on a problem and all of a sudden I make progress in an entirely different area. A lot must be going on beneath the surface! I don’t understand it, but I am very pleased and grateful.

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upcoming holidays

August

8/22 Full Moon  
8/24 St. Bartholomew’s Day

September

9/5 – 9/7 Feast of the Beast/Marriage of the Beast
9/7 Labor Day (United States)
9/20 Full moon
9/22 Fall Equinox
9/29 Michaelmas/Feast of Archangel Michael and all Angels 

 October

10/11 (?) Columbus Day
10/13 Backward Halloween
10/20 Full Moon
10/31 Halloween/start of Celtic New Year/start of the dark half of the year

Dates Important to Nazi and Neo-Nazi groups

9/1 Start of WW2  
9/7 Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year, Day of Judgement)  
9/16 Yom Kippur (Jewish Day of Atonement)  
9/21 – 9/27 Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles, Jewish harvest festival
10/4 Hitler’s alternate half-birthday (Note: Hitler was born on Easter, so Nazis celebrate his actual half-birthday, 10/20, and his alternate half-birthdate six months after Easter, which falls on 4/4 this year.)
10/16 Death of Rosenburg  
10/19 Death of Goering
10/20 Hitler’s half-birthday

(NOTE: Not all groups meet on Jewish holidays. Some groups also mark Candlemas, Beltane, Lammas, Halloween, the solstices, and the equinoxes.)

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You can find more information on the following holidays at: 

Lammas – https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/category/lamas/
and https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/07/23/august-ritual-dates/ 
Feast of the Beast/Bride of Satan: Part 1 – https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2013/08/31/the-feast-of-the-beast/
Feast of the Beast/Bride of Satan: Part 2 – https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2017/03/20/feast-of-the-beast-part-ii/
Fall Equinox – https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/the-fall-equinox/
Halloween (personal) – https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2016/10/11/halloween/ 
Halloween (background) – https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/samhainhalloween/
Thanksgiving – https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2016/11/20/thanksgiving/
Yule/Winter Solstice – https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/yulewinter-solstice/ 
Candlemas –  https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/candlemas/
Valentine’s Day –  https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/valentines-day/
Spring Equinox – https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/the-spring-equinox/
Easter: personal – (for background, see Spring Equinox) – https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/easter-blues/
Walpurgisnacht/May Eve – https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/walpurgisnacht/
Beltane – https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/beltane/
Mothers’ Day – https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2016/04/26/mothers-day/
Fathers’ Day – https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2020/06/20/ritual-abuse-and-fathers-day/
Summer Solstice (corrected text) – https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/well-this-is-embarrassing/